


Unstable Orbits

by weakinteraction



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Light Dom/sub, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-13 08:06:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5701138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fully analytical solutions to the three-body problem are possible only where the third body is negligible compared to the other two.</p><p>Clara Oswald has never been negligible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unstable Orbits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



Clara looked down at Tim and Duncan and tried very hard to avoid smiling at them.

She took a deep breath and reached for all the teacher clichés she could simultaneously. "You're both bright boys," Clara said. "If you just applied yourselves more and spent less time trying to wind each other up--"

"Yes, Miss," they said in unison. Strange how they could suddenly agree with each other just fine when there was breaktime to get to.

"I hadn't finished," Clara said sternly. "You need to consider the impact of your behaviour on others around you."

"Yes, Miss," they said again.

Clara was about to start in on a detailed accounting of exactly how much of her lesson they had disrupted, multiplied by the number of pupils, to explain that she would actually be entirely justified taking an hour of their time each to put them in after-school detention, but she wasn't going to this time, so long as they showed her they'd learned their lesson, when she noticed Mrs Pritchard hovering by the door. Her brow furrowed instantly; she couldn't remember Mrs Pritchard _ever_ coming down from her desk outside the Headteacher's office before. Was there another summons from UNIT?

"Run along then," she settled for saying to the two boys. "And don't do it again!" she shouted after them as they ducked either side of Mrs Pritchard to run out to the playground.

"Miss Oswald?" Mrs Pritchard said.

"Yes?" Clara said, her mind already leaping ahead to whatever the peril might be that was threatening humanity this week.

"Could you come up to the Head's office? Immediately."

Probably not aliens then. Maybe something worse.

"Well, it's break time," Clara said. "I was going to go to the staff room and get some coffee ... before heading out to do duty, of course," she added quickly, as she remembered that it was Week B and thus her turn to mill around studiously ignoring anything that might be going on around the back of the DT workshop.

"Immediately," Mrs Pritchard said again. "We've arranged for Mr Wilson to cover your duty."

As she followed, part of Clara's mind wondered exactly how many suspensions were about to happen; Mr Wilson had many fine qualities, but the ability to turn a blind eye definitely wasn't one of them. But mostly she was growing very concerned as to what could be so urgent, but also school-related. "What's going on?" she asked as they got to the main staircase.

"There's a parent having a meeting with the Head, a Mrs Isset; he'd very much like your input."

As they climbed, Clara ran through her markbook in her mind; she didn't teach any Issets. Couldn't even think of any in the school. There were plenty of complicated family situations, though; it wasn't impossible that she was a parent or step-parent of one of her pupils.

"Is this Mrs Isset ... complaining about something?" Clara ran back through the last few days, trying to work out what the most controversial thing she had said was. She'd mentioned to Year 7 that they shouldn't believe everything Mr Davies told them about the Normans, but that wasn't too bad, was it?

They got to the Head's office. Mrs Pritchard knocked, poked her head round and said something Clara couldn't quite hear. Then she opened the door wide, offering Clara what was presumably meant to be a reassuring smile.

Clara walked in to find the Headteacher doing his best "I am listening to your concerns" face to a woman whose back was to Clara, but who seemed to be dressed rather formally. "Ah, well, Miss Oswald is here now," he said.

"Excellent," came an all-too-familiar voice. Missy turned round to her and said, "Clara, my dear, it's so good to see you again."

Clara tried to speak, but she wasn't sure exactly what she wanted to say first. Stay the hell away from my school! Wasn't interfering with her teaching career rather small scale? What had happened to the Doctor now?

Missy took advantage of the pause to turn back to the Headteacher. She waved her hand in front of his face in an odd gesture. "Miss Oswald is your finest teacher and you don't mind at all when she takes all these sudden unexplained absences. Now go to sleep for a few minutes so she and I can have a little chat."

The Head's head slumped onto his desk.

Now there was even more that Clara wanted to say: how dare she go around hypnotising people? Didn't she understand that the Doctor always -- OK, usually -- got her back before she left? Thanks, she was a damn good teacher, actually.

What came out was: "Mrs Isset! Mrs Isset is an anagram of Mistress!"

"You spotted it!" Missy said, beaming. "Anyway, come along, dear. We've got work to do."

Clara put her hands on her hips. "No, we don't." Missy stretched her hand out towards her, waggling her fingers the same way she had towards the Head a moment ago. "And don't try to put me under the 'fluence. You know it won't work."

Missy put her hand down again with a shrug. "Oh, very well. I need your help."

Clara gave her the best you're-kidding-me face she could muster. "And why am I supposed to help you?"

"Old times' sake?"

"Last time we met you locked me inside a Dalek."

"Oh, really, if you're going to splot hairs--"

"The time before that you turned the dead of humanity into a Cyber army," Clara said, doing some epic-grade not-thinking-about-Danny as she did.

"A Cyber army to give to the Doctor!" Missy countered.

"He didn't want it!"

"Oh, he was tempted," Missy said. "Don't tell me he wasn't tempted."

Clara squinted at her and sighed. "Just tell me what you want before he wakes up," she said, nodding at the snoring Headmaster slumped on the desk.

"I just want you to get hold of the Doctor for me," Missy said. "It's his help I need really. So come on, get out your Space-Time Telegraph or whatever it's called--"

"Phone," Clara said. "It's called my phone, because it's my phone. And if -- if! I'm not saying I'm going to do it -- _if_ I phone him, what do I tell him?"

"Oh, that's easy. Just tell him I've lost my TARDIS."

* * *

The Doctor stood in the middle of Clara's living room, his eyes and hair on their wildest setting. "You've done what?"

Missy counted the words off on her fingers as she spoke. "I've. Lost. My. TAR-DIS." She was clearly eyeing up the Doctor's TARDIS, visible through the door of Clara's bedroom; the Doctor was deliberately moving around to interrupt her eyeline as she did.

"And you want me to help you find it?"

"Well, yes."

"And why should I do that? I mean, I wasn't even sure you still had a TARDIS; you've been hiding it very well. I got the old girl to search for artron traces after ... you know, last time. Or the time before last. One of those times."

"A cunning little device of my own invention I like to call an Artron Emission Inhibitor Overdrive Unit," Missy said, ostenatiously inspecting her fingernails.

"An AEIOU?" Clara said.

Missy looked at her with a gleam in her eye. "I can see why they let you teach the younglings this language of yours."

Clara said, "They're not 'younglings'!" She was aware of the Doctor shaking his head at Missy in a "Oh no, now look what you've done" gesture, so she turned to glare at him. "Or protohumans."

"That was one time, one time I called them that. I thought it was cute."

"Well, it wasn't."

Missy coughed. "I don't supposed we could return to the matter at hand, to wit my TARDIS, the disappearance thereof?"

"The one you've hidden so well that even you can't find it?" the Doctor said.

"If you must put it like that," Missy said.

"And so, I need your help. Is that what you want me to say?" She gave him a challenging look. "I _need_ you, Doctor." Clara rolled her eyes, but neither of the Time Lords seemed to notice.

"I shouldn't help you," the Doctor said. "It's a very bad idea."

"Wonderful!" Missy said.

"Were you just not listening to what he said?" Clara said. "It's a bad idea--"

"He always says that sort of thing before we team up," Missy said smugly.

"Well?" Clara said. "Are you? Teaming up with her?"

"I'm thinking!" the Doctor said, waving his hand at her snappishly. Clara knew that he was thinking about how to solve the interesting problem that Missy had set him, not whether or not he _should_. That had gone by the wayside now.

Missy gave Clara a triumphant look; Clara returned an "OK, I admit it, you were right" glare.

"A time flow analogue!" the Doctor said suddenly.

"Oooh, yes!" Missy said. "Like at the Academy."

"Just like at the Academy," the Doctor said, with a sudden, alarming smile. "Though we will need some equipment." He headed through to the kitchen. Clara followed, confused, while Missy looked on.

"Doctor, wouldn't the sort of thing you're looking for be more likely to be on board the TARDIS?"

"Oh, no, no, no," the Doctor said as he opened and shut cupboards and drawers one after the other. "What we need is ... Ah ha!" He stood upright, brandishing Clara's corkscrew.

"A corkscrew?"

"A corkscrew, and an empty wine bottle. Do you have an empty wine bottle?"

"I've got some full ones." Clara looked at the Doctor, then at Missy, then at the Doctor again. "We could ... make one of them empty? I suppose?"

* * *

Clara sat on the sofa, her legs tucked up underneath her as the Doctor and Missy faffed about on the floor doing ... whatever it was they were doing. The Doctor had explained about an hour ago, when they had poured their second glass each and in the process procured the empty wine bottle which was the ostensible point of the proceedings, and it had even seemed to make a certain amount of sense. Now, however, she seemed to have gone past the stage of tipsiness in which it made sense to one in which it made no sense at all. How this was distinguishable from sobriety she wasn't entirely sure, except that she was fairly certain she'd never noticed Missy's legs before. It must have been the way she was bent over the assemblage of random objects they were constructing on the floor, with the empty bottle at its centre.

"So you really used to build these when you were at school?"

"The Academy!" Missy shot back. "Not 'school'. And yes, all the time. He was a terror, always ruining my experiments."

"Excuse me," the Doctor said, all exaggerated offendedness, "but I think you'll find that you ruined mine far more often."

"Only because I was better at it."

"Oh my god," said Clara, lowering the wine glass that was half way to her lips. "You're just like those boys in my class."

"Oh we are, are we?" Missy said, arching an eyebrow.

"Which boys?" the Doctor said. "Would I have met them? It sounds like I ought to meet them. I liked that Courtney."

"You're the Time Lord equivalent of Tim and Duncan," Clara went on, ignoring them. "That makes so much sense."

"Am I supposed to be offended?" Missy asked in an over the top stage whisper to the Doctor. "She's usually trying to insult me when she says things like that."

"I'm not sure," the Doctor replied, even more theatrically. "Anyway, it's finished!" he said.

Clara looked at it. "It's a wine bottle with some stuff stuck in it." She returned to her earlier theme. "It does, it makes perfect sense. You--" She jabbed a finger at Missy, the effect only slightly blunted by the fact that it was attached to the hand still holding her wine glass. "You don't care about invading the Earth, or taking over the universe, or ... whatever diabolical scheme you've cooked up now--"

"I've lost my TARDIS!" Missy said. "There's no diabolical anything to it. At least not on my part."

"Don't believe you," Clara said. "Anyway, not important. It's all always about getting the Doctor's attention, isn't it? You wouldn't bother doing any of it if he wasn't there to stop you."

"Oh, fine, I admit it," Missy said. "Scheming to take over your poxy little planet is just my version of foreplay. There, does that make you happy?"

"Ha! I knew it," Clara said triumphantly. Her brain, working slower than it should what with the wine, took a moment to replay what Missy had just said. "Wait? Foreplay? I thought you said ..." Missy looked at her expectantly. "You know, all that stuff about your relationship with the Doctor being older than my civilisation."

"Well, it is," Missy said.

"But you said that to prove how it wasn't to do with sex."

"Oh, yes, I did say that. But I was _lying_!" Missy cackled. "I do do that rather a lot, you know. It's one of those little quirks that make me so endearing."

"Endearing isn't the word I'd use," the Doctor said.

"Oh?"

"Infuriating," the Doctor suggested. "Exasperating?"

"Irresistible?" Missy said, waggling her eyebrows at him.

"Do you two want me to leave?" Clara asked. Then she thought about it for a moment, put her wine glass down very carefully on a coaster, and said, "No, wait, this is my flat. I get to stay. _You_ should leave. Go get a room. Or go inside the TARDIS-- No wait, bad idea, you'll hijack it."

"I would not!" Missy protested. The Doctor gave her a sceptical look. "Well, maybe a little. Just until I found mine!"

"There is another option," the Doctor said.

"There is?" Clara said.

"There is," Missy said. Then she looked at the Doctor. "Is there?"

"If you ..." the Doctor said in reply to her, then looked at Clara. "And if you--"

Clara's brain really was taking too long to get to grips with things this evening. "Ohhh. The other option is that you two don't leave, and neither do I."

"Indeed," the Doctor said, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Clara looked at him, and then Missy, then back at the Doctor. This was definitely the most unexpected thing to have happened today, she decided. And it had some fairly stiff competition. Perhaps the most surprising part of it was that she seemed to want it to happen.

Missy seemed to sense her hesitation, and came over to her, placing a hand on her arm with surprising gentleness.

"Wait a minute," Clara said, brushing Missy away.

Missy rolled her eyes. "What now?"

"What about ... the other things you said? You know, back when we were in the shadow of that plane."

"Other things?" interjected the Doctor. "What other things?"

"You were busy messing with the timeline in mediaeval England in a fit of self-pity," Missy snapped at him. "But, yes, Clara, what other things?"

"About me being ... Y'know." She looked at the Doctor for a moment, then back at Missy with a glare. "You compared me to a dog. You said I was the Doctor's pet."

"Now, wait--" the Doctor began.

"It was a nice dog!" Missy said.

"But was it another lie?"

"Do you want it to be?" Missy asked, putting her hand back on Clara's forearm. "Will that make this easier for you?"

"All that boils down to is that you're willing to lie about having lied," Clara said, shaking her hand off. "So you've definitely lied at least once. I don't trust you."

"Probably very wise," Missy said, sidling round behind her. "But I'm not asking you to trust me. The Doctor certainly doesn't, do you, Doctor?"

"No," he said vehemently.

"I don't _like_ you," Clara said.

"I'm not asking you to like me, either," Missy said. She put her hands around Clara's waist.

"We humans tend to only do this sort of thing with people we like."

Missy barked out a laugh. "I may not be as familiar with your species as the Doctor is," she said, "but I do know that that's not even slightly true."

"It's true for me," Clara said. "At least usually."

"But you do like him, don't you?" Missy suddenly took Clara's chin in her hand and twisted her head to look straight at the Doctor. "And I think he wants--"

"I want Clara to do whatever she wants," the Doctor said, too quickly. Clara looked at him, then, properly looked at him, not just looked in his direction because Missy was holding her head that way; looked into his eyes, which were clouded over with a desire that she had never seen before. It was frightening, but there was something enticing about it too. Something enticing about Missy's hand, as well, the way she had taken control.

Where had that thought come from?

Missy let go of Clara's chin and leaned in close and kissed Clara's neck. Then she stroked Clara's hair away from her ear and whispered, "I wonder ... do you want it to be true? Do you _want_ to be our pet? We'd look after you ever so well ..."

"Stop this," the Doctor said, stepping closer.

"Make me," Missy said.

And then the Doctor was stood in front of them, nearly as close to Clara as Missy was herself. He took Missy's hand away from Clara's neck and looked straight into her eyes. What Clara saw there unnerved her and excited her at the same time: his desire for whatever this was going to be, but the same reassurance that he wouldn't let anything happen to her that he always tried to give her when they were off adventuring. Then, she found it annoying; now, it was exactly what she needed.

She nodded minutely, and he leaned down to kiss her. She parted her lips and closed her eyes, melting into the kiss. She was only dimly aware of Missy starting to unbutton her blouse from behind her, kissing her neck. As Missy removed her blouse, the Doctor kissed his way down Clara's neck and across her breasts, still covered for the moment by the fabric of her bra. The Doctor knelt on the floor as he continued to move downwards, pulling her skirt down as he reached her belly button. She stepped out of it with one foot, then the other, and kicked it away to the corner of the room.

Missy unhooked her bra as the Doctor started to roll her tights and knickers down her legs. Suddenly she was naked, acutely conscious of the two fully clothed Time Lords on either side of her and how intensely aroused she had become. The Doctor was on his knees, licking her, slowly and wonderfully, while Missy was working her way across her neck and collar bone until she was standing just off to one side. She took Clara's breast in her still-gloved hand and stroked it gently, leaning in to kiss her. She tasted unexpectedly of liquorice.

Clara spent a moment bathing in all the sensations before pulling back from Missy. "I'm going to come if you keep doing that," she said to the Doctor.

Missy moved her hand slightly to pinch Clara's nipple. "Are you asking permission?"

"Maybe," Clara said. "Yes," she admitted, as the Doctor's tongue probed deeper, making her groan.

"I think that probably counts as the Doctor giving you permission," Missy said. She leaned down to kiss the breast that she wasn't holding. Then, just as the Doctor's licking was becoming too intense, Missy bit lightly on her nipple at the same time as giving the other one an extra squeeze, and Clara found she was coming, her knees buckling against the Doctor's shoulders and her hand going out reflexively to grip the top of the nearby sofa. Still, the Doctor continued licking her for another few seconds, prompting a second orgasm in the aftermath of the first.

The Doctor stood back up, kissing his way up her body to kiss her again. Clara could taste herself on his lips.

"That was-- Wow," Clara said. "But--"

"But?" the Doctor said.

"Well ... It was wow for me. It wasn't really-- You're still fully dressed, even."

"The night is young, Miss Oswald," Missy said.

"Young indeed," the Doctor said. "Though you do have a TARDIS to find," he added, turning to Missy.

They both looked at Clara. Hating herself even as she did it, she put on her best pleading face. Missy and the Doctor exchanged a glance, then both looked at Clara again. Eventually, it was Missy who broke the silence. "Ah, it'll turn up eventually," she said as she started to unbutton her dress.


End file.
